Rockin’ Android

By: Xander

On: April 7th, 2009

RockinAndroid

Rockin’ Android is a recently formed company who are apparently planning to sell Japanese indie games to a US market. Currently only four titles are confirmed for the coming months, which include Suguri in June and Gundemonium in August but so far these appear to be pretty fantastic deals. The ‘Gundemonium’ release will feature ‘Gundemonium Recollection’, ‘GundeadliGne’ and ‘Hitogata Hapa’ for $19.99 as either a digital download or DVD (No annoucements on shipping costs or international shipping yet though).

More information and a gameplay video of ‘Suguri’ in the extended!

The ‘Suguri’ collection however will feature ‘SUGURI’ and ‘The acceleration of SUGURI’ partnered with its expansion pack, which may seem like less value at $19.99 but to sweeten the deal Rockin’ Android will be putting both OST’s in as part of the deal. There’s even some hosted on their site to sample ahead of release, though it’s clearly not up to ‘Touhou’ standards. Sadly this one looks to be DVD only as a counter-balance

I’m not quite sure how well this will work out for them, or whether they’ll be selling outside of the US (If not for the DVD editions then at least for the digital versions I hope) but I’m pretty excited about this idea. In the past it’s been pretty hard to play some of these great games (Engage to Jabberwock was from the same developer ‘Gundemonium’) without entering morally grey areas, so I really wish them the best of luck!

They’ve also produced a nice article on The World of Doujin if you’re new to the Japanese Indie Gaming scene, or alternative you can check out the TIGSource feature here!

(Thanks to GameSetWatch via Destructoid. And Jsticker for finding the video!)

  • Ataraxia

    Liking the looks of this. As long as the money goes where it belongs.

  • JoeHonkAs a

    Man, Compile had a ton of cool little PC games that never saw light of day over here. This could have been awesome back in the day.

    Also, there’s a ton of crazy Doujin Shmups I’d like to be able to buy cheaply and easily in English.

    It’s interesting that lame Hentai games seem to have no problem getting translations sold over here from jlist and company.

  • desadoc

    I read recently at ZUN’s blog (Touhou series creator) that he does not want to see Touhou games and fanwork commercialized outside doujin market.

    *Imagine japanese shmups side by side with Halo 3, ugh*

    sorry for bad english

  • Xander

    Huh, he has a far stronger.. something.. than I was expecting. Is that detest of Halo 3 because it’s a mainstream game, or western? Or is his sense of an ‘indie’ community quite different to mine?

    That said I don’t see anything entirely wrong with his point of view. Touhou is what it is because of the doujin market/comiket and so there’s simply no real reason for it to be anywhere else.

  • Fuzz

    I’d like to see an English translation of Buster’s game, Buster. http://hp.vector.co.jp/authors/VA025956/
    http://download.ips.co.jp/detail?id=AMI01827
    It’s his only game that isn’t free, and the demo is really nice.

  • Anonymous

    I’ve already gotten my Touhou copies from paletweb, but picking up Suguri sounds nice.

  • Magicman

    Touhou isn’t the shining beacon of perfection people make it out to be. It has a lot of fans for all the wrong reasons. Many of these fans haven’t even played the games

  • unigon

    More loli games in America = always good.

  • Tye The Czar

    JoeHonkAs a :Yeah. Too many of the non-high-profile ones. I want my Type-Moon stuff, my Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni, my Shuffle!(…maybe), but ESPECIALLY my Key Visual Novels. And as a bonus: the guys who worked hard to unofficially translate these for us get recruited to work on them commercially!

    Oh, and I’M FIRST TO MENTION TOUHOU!!!! Though I’d prefer to have Nicalis get ZUN to let him give the honors. I wanna see his earlier games get the Cave Story treatment, with some heavy marketing(If someone’s got the brains for such a feat)!

  • MisterX

    Bringing japanese indie games to the rest of the world seems to be a great idea, considering how very isolated the japanese indie game scene appears to be. Now, I wonder if they develop more than just shmups..

  • William Broom

    Suguri looks awesome. Like Lemming Ball Z only more Japanese.

  • TCM

    Touhou is a pretty fun bullet hell shooter, but I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t have much experience in that regard, so I can’t objectively compare it with others in the genre. The music is fantastic, and though I dislike the lolicon flavor of all the characters, the artwork is pretty good. If nothing else, it’s challenging and fun.

    Suguri looks pretty fun, from what I see.

  • MisterX

    Lots of shmups, but also lots of fighting games, platformers, puzzle games, and even some RPGs. The Japanese indie scene largely mirrors the western one, but with somewhat more focus on classic arcade-style gameplay.

    It’s a crying shame that it’s so insular – selling stuff via comic markets and specialist stores may be good for a niche market, but it’s terrible for reaching a wider audience.

    And as someone mentioned, it’s absolutely ridiculous that mountains of tacky porn games get translated and sold on places like JList, but all the actually *good* Japanese PC games have gotten ignored, until now.

    Fingers crossed that Rockin’ Android is a success and brings in more studios.

  • DominicWhite

    Holy fuck, I am not awake yet – the above post is NOT by MisterX – it’s by me, and I meant to put ‘MisterX:’ at the start of the post, as I was replying to him. Apologies for the confusion.

  • unigon

    @Tye The Czar: ZUN would never do that. He said he doesn’t want to sell his games outside small events like Comiket and Reitaisai, even for Japanese stores or online sites. He doubly wouldn’t want to sell them through a strange foreign website.

  • Magicman

    That’s weird unigon because they are already sold at some online stores.

  • unigon

    Yeah, they’re second hand (they buy large quantities of copies at events to sell via retail later).

  • TCM

    Which I find somewhat underhanded and bad-spirited.

    Then again, I pirated the games, so…I guess I have no room to talk. >_>

  • undertech

    Supply and demand folks, supply and demand.

  • Anonymous

    @TCM: You should be ashamed of yourself.

  • Breadcultist

    I tried out the Suguri demo after reading a (very positive) review. It’s pretty damn hardcore. I almost beat the first boss. Music has to be turned off for it to work in Wine. I think I’ll buy it. I’ve been wanting to get into arcade and arcade-style games for a while…

    Review here:
    http://forum.insomnia.ac/viewtopic.php?t=2748

  • Gio

    very interesting, i too want to play more of those japanese gems without having to configure my OS to play them. Even though ive tried so many times to make them work.

  • Squiggly_P

    I have no idea what the hell is happening in that video half the time, but it certainly is impressive looking. Like a cross between the DBZ games and bullet-hell. Can’t say I like DBZ all that much, but I love me a good shooter (even though I suck at them).

  • Gio

    dude you totally read my mind, i was thinking the same exact thing . (>_<)

  • Mischief Maker

    You have two options for running japanese games on Windows machines:

    1. Insert the windows install disk, go to Control Panel, Date time language, regional and language, Advanced Tab, check the Japanese box, then Apply and let the files install from the CD. Works for everything except patches

    2. Download Microsoft’s Applocale. It lets you create a shortcut to always load the program through applocale.

  • Daniel

    I’ll definitely buy Gundemonium! such a fun game.

  • dai jou bu

    ugh. I knew something like this was going to happen if I made that video public…

  • Gio

    dude watsamatter?

  • Gio

    dude watsamatter?